


another for working days

by borevidal



Category: Courting Mr. Lincoln
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bedsharing, F/M, M/M, Repression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:15:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21844285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/borevidal/pseuds/borevidal
Summary: Joshua Speed remains in Springfield and Mary, Joshua, and Lincoln attempt to converge.
Relationships: Abraham Lincoln/Joshua Speed, Abraham Lincoln/Mary Todd Lincoln/Joshua Speed
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	another for working days

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Philipa_Moss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philipa_Moss/gifts).



> A slight AU -- Speed remains in Springfield and the first engagement between Lincoln and Mary Todd goes off successfully. Yet Lincoln's noteworthy bout of depression has occurred prior to the events of the story? I played a little loose with the timeline. All typos and anachronisms mine.

**Mary**

Nothing about the picnic could have been complained of. The provisions were ample and selected with care; the weather clear; the company delightful – Mercy, Mary, Mr. Lincoln, and the solicitous Mr. Speed. When Mr. Conkling appeared as though by chance and spirited Mercy off for a stroll over the dry sweet-smelling grass, Mary feared a moment for the company, but Mr. Speed soon set things to rights, moving to sit on one side of Mary while Mr. Lincoln remained upon the other, and the conversation was shortly humming again.

Indeed, with the aid of champagne, Mary almost feared that the conversation hummed along too easily. She was emboldened by the two pairs of eyes fixed upon her, and began to volunteer all sorts of daring opinions, feeling a blush creep up her neck as Mr. Speed turned his gaze on her. Since the engagement he had been cold and she had been awkward, but something about the setting, and the fizz of the bubbles on her tongue, and the shy pleased glances that Lincoln darted between them seemed to encourage boldness at the same time that it left her blushing furiously. She tried to chase it, to turn her remarks to Mr. Lincoln, save that he did not seem perturbed; he looked as much at ease as ever.

The words echoed in her head: “Do they both mean to court you?”

Did they? Through a mouthful of champagne, she dared to put words to the question. The query landed strangely; Mr. Speed blushed, and Mr. Lincoln looked merrily unruffled. “Well, Miss Todd,” he said, indicating himself with his immense hand, “if you had two husbands, you’d seldom wear this one.”

They had all bubbled over with laughter then, as Mercy returned, but the joke proved impossible to explain.

At the door of the Edwards house, Lincoln bowed to kiss her forehead, and Mr. Speed pressed a kiss to her hand, and she was once again peculiarly unsure of the origin of her blush.

**Joshua**

There was one dream that bedeviled him since Lincoln’s engagement was announced.

Speed lay in their bed with the coverlet drawn up. He could hear the usual noises of Lincoln preparing himself for sleep; the rustlings of cloth and clink of buttons. But Lincoln stood modestly behind a screen, with an air of curious formality. Outside the window, the cry of a starling. The wind throwing itself against the roof. And something else about this familiar ritual was strange. It was their bed but the view beyond the window was the view from Quality Hill. And at the neck of his own nightshirt Joshua all at once perceived that there was a high collar of white lace. There had been a mistake, Speed realized. His heart began to pound at the thought of the discovery of the mistake. There had been a confusion, a substitution; Miss Todd lay alone in a cold bed at the top of the stairs in his own worn nightshirt. He was in the bridal bed. Lincoln had not yet detected the mistake; but surely he would when he drew back the covers. Speed’s heart raced as Lincoln drew nearer; his long shadow reached the bed first. “Well, Mrs. Lincoln,” he said. “Here I am.” Speed lay painfully still as he bent down to kiss his bride. And Speed woke up.

After such dreams it was not always a blessing to awaken to the steady stertorous breathing of Lincoln in the bed next to him. Joshua waited for his pulse to stop racing.

“Speed,” Lincoln said. “Another nightmare?”

Speed tried to laugh but the sound he produced had a hysterical quality. “No,” he said. “Just a muddle.”

Yet from the dream there remained a kind of miserable excitement. There was a knot of something in his stomach that would not be dispelled. That final wild hope that he would not be detected — it lingered with him, lodged in him like a true secret.

**

The picnic was decidedly peculiar. There was too much champagne, and Joshua had only been prevailed upon to attend after what, from Lincoln, was considerable beseeching. He had replied unpleasantly that if they went courting together again Miss Todd would regret her choice, and Mr. Lincoln had only replied, “Then we must do her that courtesy.”

The man was infuriating, Speed thought, as he packed provisions and folded a picnic cloth. He selected a ripe pineapple as the centerpiece and then several bottles of champagne.

“This is too much,” Lincoln said.

“Hardly,” Joshua replied, shouldering the basket, arming himself for the encounter.

At the picnic, Mercy had stranded them (unmercifully, Joshua thought) and after her departure Speed could not help observing that he had an effect on Miss Todd that was very nearly mortifying. Though she seldom stinted in her speech, merely the impact of his regard and the champagne evoked increasingly wild pronouncements and deep blushes. He felt strangely implicated, though he had done little to call forth the blush, and his own color rose in response.

Somehow the conversation worked ‘round to the subject of Mr. Joseph Smith and it was then that Mary dared to venture a highly unorthodox opinion.

“I — you are Lincoln’s — friend, and I would not make an enemy of you,” Mary appended, after some sally he had aimed at her exploded harmlessly overhead. “I am heartily sorry if I have.”

“An enemy?” Joshua asked, half-laughing. “Of me?”

“I hope it is not on my account,” Mary said. “It is only a pity that one heart is not sufficiently capacious.”

“Now I must beg you to speak plainly,” Joshua said stiffly. “You mean—is it your heart you think that I have broken? Or mine, rather?”

Mary blinked confusion at him.

“I am flattered that you would have me,” Joshua stumbled, “yet— I could not hope to supplant Mr. Lincoln in anyone’s affections.”

Mary smiled, suddenly and with genuine warmth. “Yes,” she said. “Though in such a situation I would argue the merits of turning Mr. Joseph Smith’s system upon its head. A pity indeed, that one cannot have one husband for show and another for working days.”

“As Beatrice advocates.”

“If you had two husbands,” Lincoln interjected sheepishly, “you would seldom wear this one.”

“On the contrary,” Speed interjected.

“You mean that I am so homespun that I would be more practical entirely, whereas you ought to be saved for momentous occasions.”

“Now,” Speed said, feeling his cheeks heat, at the inclusion of himself in this curious hypothetical, “I—had not consented to be a party to this arrangement.”

“But who else?” Mary interjected.

Joshua’s mouth hung open. “We have rendered him speechless, Molly,” Lincoln said. Speed marked the word; this existence of a private name and the suggestion of a shared mutual country occupied beyond it. “I think between us we might make one decent husband, Joshua.”

“Do you allude to the waistcoat?” Speed attempted; he was a boy, lost, blundering blindly through the hemp again. Mary’s hand pressed gently to his wrist. He glanced up at her.

“The waistcoat?”

“He was in need of a waistcoat,” Joshua said, limply, willing the words to convey more than he saw they could. “I— knew what might suit, and I was pleased to serve.”

He watched her hand grip his, was aware that his was sweating. “It suits him very well,” she said.

Then Mercy returned (unmercifully) with her Mr. Conkling, and they were left only to look from one to the other and burst into laughter again. And amid all this Joshua detected Miss Todd’s glance – not directed at him, but watching him. There was a moment when they both looked to Lincoln to see what he would make of something. Lincoln caught neither of the looks, but their eyes met in the course of seeking his, and he had briefly and uncomfortably the sense of a mirror.

At parting, Lincoln’s eyes on them both, she permitted him to kiss her hand, and a blush rose to both their cheeks, unbidden.

**

“Shall we take the long way?” Lincoln suggested. Speed acquiesced. They skirted the rim of the city, approached the unfinished railroad junction, and halted there. The silence between them had a curious quality. Lincoln looked forlornly at him, as though there were something he would prefer someone else to state, but Joshua remained doggedly silent.

“I think you had better say what you mean,” Joshua said, his voice faltering. “Out loud.”

“I do not know what I mean,” Lincoln said. “That is the trouble. I think you two more alike than -- I wish you could be friends.”

“To what end, Brother Abraham?” Speed asked.

Lincoln studied his cuffs, as though he could not determine whether or not they were clean. “Suppose I could make half a husband,” Lincoln said, “and you the other half. Would you oppose yourself to matrimony then?”

“In what world would that be possible?” Speed asked. “Not in this one, surely.”

“If we could not disrupt this brotherhood of ours,” Lincoln said, “but strengthen it.”

“That is an idle speculation, Lincoln.”

“Come courting with me,” Lincoln said.

“That isn’t done.”

“If I’m –”

“Have you taken leave of your senses?” Speed set off as fast as he could, but Lincoln paced him easily. “I thought I had civilized you, but – to suggest such a thing.”

“ _Joshua_ ,” Lincoln said. Speed halted. “Why are you angry?”

Joshua’s thoughts reeled around wildly. “Because – you say such a thing as though you think it possible, or natural, and –”

Lincoln watched him, strangely calm.

“And – it is not, Brother Abraham.”

**

That night the dream was merciless.

Lincoln undid his buttons behind the screen once again, formal, as Joshua lay there in his nightshirt gazing down from Quality Hill, trying not to breathe. Again the sense of substitution. Again the frantic pounding of his heart beneath the nightshirt as he waited to see if he would go undetected. Again Lincoln’s shadow fell over the bed. Joshua tried to still his breathing. But before bending to pull aside the covers, Lincoln extinguished the candle. Then Lincoln bent to kiss – to kiss him. Mistake! Speed thought, plummeting, anxious. Surely he will know his mistake. But Lincoln seemed not to detect the substitution. The dream did not spare him the sensation of Lincoln’s mouth on his, Lincoln’s enormous hand framing his face, Lincoln’s thigh slotted warmly and firmly between his. He wrenched himself awake when he began to feel his own body responding pliantly to the intrusion. He lay there, wretched, panting, trying to will his breath to become even. 

At times like this Lincoln’s uniform solicitousness was not a comfort. To awaken to a firm large hand pressed against his shoulder with a reassuring joke required him to twist his body away beneath the coverlet. He told himself Lincoln did not perceive such moments. He told himself, too, that there was no shame in this; it was the way of all flesh; quite natural to awaken from a dream whose passions would be dispelled in a moment with the reminder of a rough and muscled thigh in the place of a dream-maiden; the only shame that darkened the doorway of his mind was: then why pull away? Only a natural urge for privacy; not the horror that the feeling of the dream might not be dispelled but intensified.

**Mary**

Lincoln was reticent as the date set for the nuptials approached. They went on their walks, making the steady round of Springfield like a minute and an hour hand together – she remarked upon this similitude and the corners of his mouth twitched upwards only briefly. He seemed very distant. At one point he asked her opinion on some point of the preparations and, once her answer was delivered, asked the same question again.

“Are you anxious, Richard?” she demanded, as they began toiling up Quality Hill. “May I – is there anything I might do to knit up the raveled sleeve of care or smooth that furrowed brow?”

“These furrows were sowed with cares long before you approached the farm,” he replied. “And I doubt there is much your little white hand could do to hasten the harvest.”

She wished to say: I only meant, what can I do? How can I be of service? But he was distant again.

“Is it the wedding?” she heard herself asking, frustrated by the querulous note. “My family—”

He shook his head. “No, Miss Todd,” he said. “I, myself.” He bowed her to the door and she watched his figure dwindle down the hill, then join another. Mr. Speed, she recognized. She nearly called out but something stayed her tongue. Some sense that there were no words in her yet for what she wished to say.

**Joshua**

On that night months ago after Lincoln had clapped an arm around his shoulders on their walk, he remembered how when he lay awake in bed with the question “Did you mean it?” ringing on his lips, Lincoln had turned towards him. “I meant it,” he had said.  
“Good,” Joshua had said. “So did I, Brother Abraham.” He had tried to emulate the gesture; its spontaneity and largeness had touched a chord in him, but horizontal it lost much of its force. He could not grip Lincoln’s shoulders; he settled for pressing one. Lincoln’s hand covered his, pressed. They had been nearer enough then that he could feel Lincoln’s breath on his face.  
“I am very glad,” Lincoln had said. Their foreheads were pressed together. I could kiss him, Speed had reflected then, strangely impelled by the thought. Solemnize this bond. Like David unto Jonathan.

Lincoln had yawned. It was the yawn that propelled him away, the little catch in Lincoln’s throat that followed, a minatory reminder of his fleshly presence. Now he was more grateful than he could state that he had not put this impulse into practice.

Still the memory of the night lingered: not of sleeping but of waking. The night had shifted them. He awoke to find himself nestled deep in Lincoln’s sinewy arms, pillowed on his chest. Upon discovering themselves thus, they both had laughed. He would recollect later the joy of feeling that soft rumble directly beneath him. The sense of something right.

**

“You are confident, then?” Joshua heard his voice ask, in the stillness of the bed between them, after Lincoln had settled upon his side.

“I would not call it confident,” Lincoln said. “I am nervous as a man with a cat by the tail.”

Joshua let the words hang there, hoping that Lincoln would elaborate, but as he did not, he offered, “About what, in particular?”

“There was a man once,” Lincoln said, “who was noted for his quickness of wit, and once he was set to carve a turkey. And no sooner did he take up the knife and fork but he let out the most enormous fart.”

Joshua laughed.

“Everyone looked at him to see what he would do. And he made a great show of sharpening the knife and rolling up his sleeves, and then he turned to the assembled company and said, Now, by God, let’s see if I can’t carve this turkey without farting.”

Speed’s laughter ceased. “What is the moral of this parable, Brother Abraham?”

“I—hope I can carve the turkey without farting,” Lincoln said.

“Brother Abraham,” Speed said, through a laugh that he fancied sounded almost hysterical, “if this is your damned circuitous way of speaking about the wedding night—”

“Why?” Lincoln asked, laughing too, “would you have offered to _show me_ —”

Speed felt the ground drop out beneath his mirth, as though someone had disembarked from the other end of an enormous seesaw and sent him flying. 

“I don’t mean only that,” Lincoln said. He shifted in the bed, turned to face Speed. Speed had the same dream-like sensation of not wishing to breathe, lest he be detected. But detected how? For what? “Speed, is it – all right?” He barely recovered enough to notice the quaver in Lincoln’s voice. Lincoln was asking for comfort. He tried to think of a way to put it into words. How would one speak who wished to comfort? One might say that their practice had all been tending towards something; that it was no end in itself, and anyone who hoped it so was a fool (a damn fool, Speed told himself, bitterly); that he had simply been doing a duty that it was a pleasure to do, handing Lincoln up the ladder; that there had to be some end in view, and this was the end, and it was just as Lincoln must surely have wished, that nothing could be more natural.

But a rebel contingent in him stopped the limp words before they could reach his mouth. He extended his hand – Lincoln took it. Lincoln’s hand was cold. He pressed the hand to his lips.

For a long time neither of them said anything. “No,” he said, finally, after he thought Lincoln might have dropped asleep. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

**

The wedding was nothing like his nightmares. Miss Todd blushed at him all the way down the aisle on her journey to becoming Mrs. Lincoln. She was resplendent in ribbons, flowers in her hair. He offered a toast at the reception; he did not entirely overindulge.

Lincoln was quiet; he noticed Miss Todd – Mrs. Lincoln – looking at him with concern; their eyes kept meeting when he failed to catch them. Lincoln withdrew into himself, traced circles on the table with his finger. He found himself unaccountably solicitous; he had expected, somehow, to be angrier, at this dissolution of their fellowship. But it was all transmogrified to pity. It was like watching a man try to cut off his own limb.

He saw them both to the carriage.

“Well, Speed,” Lincoln said, halting on the step. “I’m—moved.”

“It’s all right,” Speed said, catching his hand, and pressing it. The hand was still cold, limp. Clammy. “Brother Abraham, the turkey is all right.”

This effort produced the intended smile – wan and small, a new moon. Miss Todd – Miss Lincoln -- was already in the carriage. Again, moved by he knew not what impulse, Speed pressed Lincoln’s hand to his lips.

That night there were no dreams.

**Mary**

Lincoln withered like the wedding flowers -- not noticeably at first, but then anyone who saw him would not have guessed him the same man. 

He did not stir from bed.

“The legislature is in session,” Mary volunteered.

“They must do without me,” Lincoln said. He pulled the comforter higher. When Mary discovered him there still, motionless, the bed fouled, she ran for the doctor.

It was terrifying to see him this way, so familiar and yet so alien. Like a corpse, she thought, and then slammed her mind shut against it. Like one already dead. No, no, no! She would not let this be.

The doctor, when he visited, said something curious. Inquire of Mr. Speed, he suggested. Mr. Speed, the last to nurse Lincoln through a malady of such kind.

Mary could not state exactly why the thought filled her with such a degree of pique. “I shall do for him,” she said, evenly.

But when she sat next to his bed he was so far – so far—and she did not know how to draw him to her. She read to him from the newspaper and he lay there with such patience (such indifference) that finally she felt that it was torment and stopped. She stroked his hair. He flinched. Just once, but she noted it.

Mrs. Francis visited, singlehandedly garrulous as ever, and then beckoned Mary to a cup of tea. “You must see him,” she said, without preamble.

“Him?” Mary inquired, deliberately obtuse.

“Don’t be deliberately obtuse,” Mrs. Francis said. “Mr. Speed.”

That night, at Lincoln’s bedside, attempting to coax some of the landlady’s vile broth into him, Mary faltered.

“Might I – is there anything—” she started.

He only stared at the wall.

When she returned downstairs with the soup bowl she saw someone standing across the street, but he made away before she could nod to him in greeting, and thus etiquette demanded they remain unknown to one another.

**Joshua**

“He will not sleep,” Miss T— Mrs. Lincoln said, the words tumbling out of her mouth over the store counter. “He lies awake and harangues with an invisible figure and awakens tired, and — some days I can scarcely bestir him, and — Mrs. Francis says that, says, that you knew how, that you were—“ She broke off. “Please if you care for him, Mr. Speed, come home with me and — I do not know what else to do. I remember how you were — when he —“

“I am glad you came to me,” Joshua replied. He was already locking the store.

“Mr. Speed,” Mrs. Lincoln said. “I— would like to think that we are friends.”

“We are friends,” Joshua said, quickly.

**

He tried to make himself as small and quiet as he could as they ascended the stairs. When she led him to the room and stood aside, he was briefly mute, as though he might remain invisible as long as he made no sound.

“I will fetch some broth,” Mary suggested.

When she departed something in the room shifted. Lincoln remained motionless but Speed could tell that he was perceived.

“Miss—Mrs. Lincoln tells me you are not well,” Joshua said.

Lincoln said nothing. For a moment Joshua saw himself as in the mirror of his dream, but their positions were reversed. He approached the bed. Lincoln’s face was wet with tears. His eyes were hollow and exhausted.

“Not on Captain Speed’s watch,” Joshua said. He clasped Lincoln by the hand. Lincoln made a faint sound. Speed bent towards him.

“I’m here,” Speed said.

Speed climbed up into the bed, settled himself against Lincoln’s back. He heard Lincoln’s breathing grow even. He remained there. Sleep was starting to claim him too when Mary returned with the broth. He mouthed an apology. But she merely nodded.

**Mary**

What Elizabeth would have made of her present predicament she did not venture to guess. She could not sleep on the floor. She could not sleep in the chair. Towards dawn a third possibility occurred to her and she began gently and carefully to undo the fastenings of her garments, to don her nightgown, and then clambered up into the bed on Lincoln’s side of it. Only Mr. Speed — handsome in repose, a veritable Endymion — stirred. But then sleep claimed him. 

Waking felt more natural than she had expected, though the bed was far from comfortable. 

*

Lincoln was pleased when he awoke. Not well, but – pleased. “Beneath one roof,” he murmured, and Speed made a low noise, as though the words meant something.

**

At first surprising, this arrangement began to be the pattern of his convalescence. Left to his own devices, or in the hands of merely one of them, he flagged; it required the two of them to serve him as a prop.

Mr. Speed was less charming than before and she found herself more charmed. They traded watches in the night with less awkwardness than she had anticipated. Sometimes she could see that he, exhausted, was horrified by his own candor. “I taught him to waltz,” he told her. “And mend his cuffs, and, to tie his tie.”

“You did very well,” Mary replied. “You are a great help.”

“It was a service I was pleased to perform,” Joshua said, then winced, for no reason she could see.

Sometimes she was reminded of an ancient frieze, figures pursuing one the other all the way around until you were no longer certain when the chase began.

**

“We cannot go on as we are,” Mr. Speed said, one morning.

“No,” Mr. Lincoln said, deliberately. They waited for him to say something else. “How do you reckon they domesticated dogs, Molly?”

“I don’t see what bearing—” Speed began, impatiently. But Mr. Lincoln reached out and touched him, to stay him.

“By continuing, deliberately, that which began half by convenience and half by chance,” Mary answered.

Mr. Lincoln made a noise of assent. “And are we not more than dogs?”

Thus stated it became suddenly and frighteningly possible. None of them looked at each other.

But that night they set about things deliberately.

She stood near the end of the bed twisting her handkerchief in one hand. “I think you ought to begin, gentlemen,” she said, then faltered.

Lincoln’s head, at an angle, regarded her; his eyes were not eloquent. 

It was Speed, in the end, who set about making things easy. “It will be just like old times, Brother Abraham,” he suggested. “Lie down and be comfortable.”

Lincoln did; his eyes were on Mary’s throughout.

“Then I shall join,” Speed said, and Mary found to her unease that his eyes were on her too, illumined by a strange light that seemed half hope and half terror. Do not abandon this now, his eyes seemed to beseech her; do not halt before the track ends; see it as far as you can. 

She twisted the nightgown in her hands. “And where am I then?”

“You must settle that,” Speed said. There was almost a welcome in his face — a shade shy of welcome. This was as welcome, she felt sure, as his face had ever dared to make her; there was no courteous wall. Yet it was as warmly as she had ever seen him to look. He glanced at Lincoln who lay rigid; her glance followed; there was a twinship in the glances. “Do be at ease, Miss—“

“Mrs.,” Mary amended, with some satisfaction, using her arms to heave herself up onto the middle of the bed, like an apostrophe curled between an exclamation point and an interrogation mark. “Mrs. Lincoln.” She dared then very gently to let her hand rest on Lincoln’s sharp elbow. He was so very large; the difference had not ceased to amaze her. “It’s all right,” she said. She was not certain whom she addressed. 

Lincoln turned to face her — to face them, she realized, with a jolt, for Speed was there too, carefully resisting his natural tendency to place a distance between them. She could feel how rapidly his heart was going.

“Beneath one roof,” Lincoln said, quietly. His eyes were full of curdled hope that seemed almost akin to pain. 

“Yes, Brother Abraham,” Mr. Speed said. She watched him reach, so carefully, like a man dropping a penny into a full glass, to press his hand on Lincoln’s arm. With a boldness that terrified her she slid her fingers to join his. They were not huge like Lincoln’s; there was no thrill in seeing her tiny fingers engulfed, but they were warm and steady, and the fingers a pleasing shape, if at the moment wet with perspiration. It was pleasant. She breathed slowly in, then out. 

“You are all right?” Lincoln asked.

“Yes.” She said it before she knew it to be true. 

He looked pained, still, and she tried to chase the furrow from his brow with a kiss. She meant his cheek but found his lips. Behind her, Speed went still. She was not sure of the origin of this stillness, merely remarked it. 

There was a catch in Lincoln’s throat when they pulled apart. She dared not turn round. For a moment the enterprise seemed doomed. Then Mr. Speed, as always, discovered the right words.

“Show me,” he said. 

There was a great wilderness of looks between them. She saw only Lincoln’s side of it. 

“Well it’s,” he said, tracing his thumb down the curve of her cheek. Speed watched attentively. 

“Show me,” he said.

Lincoln glanced at Mary and she tried to look encouragement at him, though the question was still obscure to her. Then Lincoln grasped Speed’s thumb and brought it to the rough plane of his own cheek. Joshua traced it attentively. 

“Then,” Lincoln said — and Mary watched with what she at first took to be alarm as he brought their faces together. It was like the kiss he had bestowed on her but also it was — not like. It was a brotherly kiss, she thought; bits of scripture jangled towards her. Your love was wonderful to me, Jonathan. Passing the love of women. She was conscious now of her own noisy stillness. 

Speed pulled back and instead of being frozen she found herself in motion. She bent towards him. “I will show you,” she said, and kissed him. 

It was a curious kiss; he demanded nothing, yet there was pleasure in it. She was aware, as he was, of a set of dark eyes burning into both of them; there was something in the notion of his watching that was a bit exhilarating. It emboldened her; he responded in kind; he was so pleasing and his hair so thick and soft and lovely that she could not help but ruffle it. Another hand joined hers as she did so, a familiar hand. They were both, she reflected, resting in Abraham’s bosom. 

She pulled back in triumph. “Dear Mrs. Lincoln,” Speed said, smiling, “it’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, drawing him to her. “Mr. Speed.”

“Joshua,” he said.

“Joshua,” she said.

The night passed quickly then.

Mary remembered it in fits. From kissing it had progressed by degrees. At first it had seemed vaguely natural that she ought to be the center of proceedings but as the night wore on a shift took place, and gradually but with greater determination they began touching _him_. She traced the marks of his scars with a white finger, and Mr. Speed settled against his chest. Lincoln seemed flustered by the attention but at the same time the hope in his eyes had not been extinguished. To the contrary.

**Joshua**

In the morning Joshua awoke by degrees. The consciousness of past pleasure was borne suddenly upon him; the bed was familiar and strange at once; the sensations of his own body, familiar and strange. He assembled beds behind his eyelids and attempted to reconcile them with his present position. None suited. Finally he opened his eyes. He was in bed behind Lincoln, breathing gently against his neck; there was a third source of breath; her brown hair was tangled on the pillow in the shade past Lincoln’s head. They were all pressed together. 

”Are we domesticated yet?” Lincoln inquired. 

”I reckon so,” said Mary, with a trilling laugh. Speed joined it. His fingers found her own.

“Yes,” he breathed, against Lincoln’s neck.  
  
“That was a good dream, wasn’t it?” Lincoln said, and there was knowledge and suggestion in his tone. It was like punchline to a known story, a story to be told in interleaved voices. Perhaps not the punchline, Joshua thought. Perhaps the beginning. 


End file.
